My Name is...
by Queen Kakia
Summary: Alternate Universe...What if Tess were Liz and Liz were Tess?
1. Default Chapter Title

Dear Journal,  
  
My name is Tess Harding, and five days ago I died. After that, things got really weird.  
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It all started that one day in the Crashdown. That's the restaurant my parents own in this dinky rathole called Roswell, New Mexico. You've heard all the UFO stories. I have, anyway.  
  
Most of our customers are tourists and UFO freaks, and this couple was no exception. They were both wearing UFO T-shirts and visors. True Believers, I guess. They must have come for the annual Crash Festival.  
  
After taking their orders, I waited around for their questions. There were always questions.  
  
"So, does your family come from Roswell?" the woman asked.  
  
"Four generations back." Flat out lie. My parents had been UFO-holics as teenagers and had moved here when they'd married at the age of 19. But white lies never hurt anyone, did they?  
  
It interested them. The guy looked up curiously. "Well, does anyone in your family have stories about the UFO crash?"  
  
I almost smiled at their predictability, but instead, put on a concerned face. "If you don't tell anybody..." I looked at their captivated faces and felt like I was talking to a kindergarten class, "I guess I can show you this." I pulled out a picture from my pocket. It looked exactly like the "aliens" from the crash. In fact, it was just my old stuffed alien doll. "Don't show this to anyone while I get your orders."  
  
I walked back towards the kitchen, where my co-waitress, Maria DeLuca, was waiting. Maria's okay. We probably never would have met if she hadn't joined the Crashdown force, but we've gotten to be pretty good friends.  
  
She grinned mischevously. "You are *so* bad, girl. And by the way, Max Evans is staring at you again."  
  
I rolled my eyes. Max Evans is Isabel Evans' brother. Isabel is my best friend in the world--we're practically twins. Max has this huge thing for me, which is annoying. Don't get me wrong, he's hot as hell, but he's not my type. He's a little too square for me. Anyway, I have my eye on someone else, and I think he might like me too. "Maria..."  
  
She so wants us to get together. At that moment, with her standing there and grinning like an idiot, I might have slapped her, if I wouldn't have gotten in huge trouble for it. "He's *so* into you," she teased, and walked off towards a table.  
  
Suddenly, two guys near the window started to fight loudly. One of them jumped up and broke a plate. I was about to go pick it up, but stopped in my tracks when the other guy pulled out a gun. I saw everyone else in the restaurant drop to the floor, but for some reason I was frozen.  
  
"Tess!" I heard Maria's voice yell, but it didn't register.  
  
There was a loud bang. The gun went off, and I dropped. The pain was so unbearable that it was numbing--I couldn't feel it at all. For that matter, I couldn't feel anything. I was drifting off...  
  
...and suddenly I was awake. Staring into the eyes of Max Evans, who else. I looked down and saw that my uniform was undone. I was about to reach up and slap him, when it registered in me. I'd been shot. I'd been dying. And somehow, Max Evans had brought me back to life.  
  
"Holy crap," I whispered under my breath. "What *are* you?"  
  
His eyes were open wide. He was terrified of something, but I wasn't sure what. Suddenly, he grabbed a ketchup bottle off the nearest table, broke it, and spilled the contents on me.  
  
"What are you doing, Max? Eww!" I asked, shocked, and started to get up. I redid the buttons on my uniform and looked at him for an answer.  
  
"You broke a bottle when you fell, spilled ketchup on yourself," he told me, begging. "Don't say anything please." Then he turned and ran. 


	2. Default Chapter Title

The ambulance crew showed up almost exactly a second after Max disappeared. Luckily on his part, I guess. They wanted to look me over, even though I kept insisting that I was fine and that it was just ketchup. Hey--Max saved my life, whatever he did. I figured I owed him this much.  
  
My father, meanwhile, was having a cow. No matter how hard I tried to reassure him, he was in hysterics and wouldn't stop. Finally, I suggested that the ambulance crew check *him* out. And got punished, of course. Since they'd already said that I was all right, he decided that it was okay for me to go to my room.  
  
I walked upstairs to our apartment. As soon as I got in, I collapsed on the couch, shaking. I didn't believe that I had just almost died.  
  
"Tess?"  
  
Oh, no. Maria had followed me upstairs. I was so not in the mood to hear a lot of talking. But there she was, ready to confront me. "So, what just happened?"  
  
"What, don't you listen?" I snapped irritably. "I told everyone--I was startled, I knocked over the ketchup bottle."  
  
Maria rolled her eyes. "I'm not stupid, you know. I saw you. You were *dying,* girl."  
  
"I think *I* would know," I replied. Could the girl *not* take a hint? "It was *ketchup.*"  
  
She made some kind of loud, annoyed sound. "Fine." And then she went back downstairs, leaving me to start shaking again. Okay, Maria was right. I had almost died.  
  
Wow.  
  
I had almost died.  
  
I started threading my fingers through my uniform--I always pick at my clothes when I'm nervous. And I came across the bullet hole.  
  
Holy *shit.* I reopened the front of my uniform. The blood had dried, so I went to wash it off. Who knew blood stuck so hard?  
  
Then I saw something silver under the blood. I scraped some more blood off. And gasped.  
  
It was a handprint. A glowing silver handprint. Max's glowing silver handprint.  
  
I changed as quickly as I could, climbed down my balcony, got into my car, and drove as fast as I possibly could to the Evans' house. 


	3. Default Chapter Title

Isabel answered the door on the first ring. "Hey, Tess, what's up?"  
  
"Hi," I replied quickly. "Where's your brother?"  
  
She gave me a weird look as I followed her inside. "My brother *Max*? Are you okay, Tess?"  
  
"No," I replied, rushed. "Sorry, Isabel, I just really need to-"  
  
"Tess?" Max interuppted from the doorway.  
  
"Max, what did you do to me today?" I demanded, not caring that Isabel was in the room. "And what happened to the bullet? There WAS a bullet--the hole was in my dress. Why am I not dead? What did you *do*?"  
  
"Oh my G-d, Max," Isabel murmured. "You didn't..."  
  
"What, you know?" I turned on her.  
  
She ignored me. "You *healed* her, Max?"  
  
He looked sheepish. "I couldn't let her *die*..."  
  
"Where was this?" she asked.  
  
"The crashdown," I answered. "Is somebody going to tell me what happened?"  
  
Isabel went into ice queen mode. "The *Crashdown*? How *could* you, Max? All that talk you give me about not using my powers and you go and heal someone in the middle of the Crashdown??? With *witnesses* around? What about us, Max? Did you think of us at all when you announced to the world about us? Or were you just being a dick and saving her so she might fuck you out of gratitude?"  
  
Isabel doesn't really mean everything she says. Like that, for example. I'm *sure* she was just trying to emphasize her point. She would never seriously speak that way about me. Still...nobody calls me a slut, so I slapped her. "What the hell are you talking about?"  
  
She didn't react to the slap, but she did finally acknowledge me. "Shut up, Tess. I'm trying to talk to my brother."  
  
"And *I'm* trying to find out why the hell I'm not dead right now. I'm sure your talk can wait."  
  
She paled a little. "Max, we can't tell her."  
  
"What can we say?" Max asked her, irritated. "Yeah, Tess, I just altered your life but forget the whole thing happened? What would keep her from going straight to Sheriff Valenti and telling him everything?"  
  
"Well, that's your problem, isn't it, Max?" she replied nastily.  
  
"If she tells Valenti, it would affect you, too," he pointed out.  
  
Isabel walked over to the closest chair and sat down. Nobody said anything for a while--we were both waiting for her to talk. Everyone knows you can't talk while Isabel Evans has something to say.  
  
"Well," she finally said, glaring at Max. "That's just great, Max. *You* make a stupid mistake-"  
  
"Izzy, she's your best friend," Max pleaded. "Would you rather she have died?"  
  
It quieted her down for a few seconds, but then she began again. "Okay, fine. *You* do something heroic but stupid. And *I'm* getting busted for it."  
  
What, could they not trust me at all? Did eight years of friendship mean nothing to her? "I'm not busting anyone. Not if you guys actually tell me what happened."  
  
"All right, then." There was something sinister and challenging in her eyes. "We're aliens."  
  
"Aliens. Right." And my whole theory about a setup conspiracy to scare me which included packets of blood in my uniform and my imagination goes down the drain.  
  
"Well, if you don't believe me, you're not going to go and tell the Sheriff, will you?" Isabel asked. And I caught a glimpse of something in her eyes. Was it fear? Was the high and mighty Isabel Evans afraid of something?  
  
Wow. I had power.  
  
"Leave the sheriff out of this." What was their obsession with him anyway? He had nothing to do with this. "I want to know why I'm not dead. And not alien-conspiracy crap."  
  
"It's not a conspiracy," Max said from behind me. I whirled around, and he smiled lightly for a second. The smile faded as quickly as it had come. "We come in peace."  
  
Aliens. Right. And yet...what other explanation was there for the fact that at this moment, I wasn't in the hospital, dead? "You're   
serious?"  
  
Their faces told me everything I had to know. They, in fact, were   
not from around here. And I was alone with two of them. No, no, no.   
I backed away slowly, towards the door.  
  
Isabel shot Max a panicked look, and he held onto my arm. I tried to   
pull away, but he held tight. Shit...was he going to kill me?   
"Tess," he whispered. "You can't tell anyone. Do you know what's   
going to happen to us if you do?"  
  
I nodded. Of course I knew. They'd be taken away to a lab to have experiments done on them...and possibly to be killed. An image of them lying on white tables, being dissected, flashed into my mind. Isabel, alien or not, was my best friend. I would never let that happen to her. "I won't tell anyone."  
  
And the doorbell rang. 


	4. Default Chapter Title

The three of us looked at each other. Finally, Isabel got up to get it. "If that's Valenti..." She opened it, and Maria DeLuca stood in the doorway. Oh, shit.  
  
"Were you invited?" Isabel demanded.  
  
Maria ignored her. "Max, what did you do to Tess today?"  
  
Isabel put her head in her hands.  
  
I rolled my eyes. "Maria, I *told* you already. He didn't do anything."  
  
She glared at me. "Do you think I'm blind? I saw you go down, and I saw him run up to you. And then you were fine. Except that you were covered in blood."  
  
"Ketchup. And I was fine the whole time," I insisted. "I fell because I was startled."  
  
"Yeah?" she challenged, opening her bag which I hadn't even noticed. She pulled out something light blue...crap. "Then *why* does your uniform have a bullet hole and a bloodstain on it?"  
  
There was a hole, all right. And it was covered in dark red. They couldn't have been mistaken for something else, especially if you're Maria DeLuca. I didn't say anything. Luckily, I guess, Isabel decided to take charge.  
  
"Okay, ditz, what's your point?" she challenged. I winced. Maria had valuable information. Maybe Isabel was going the wrong way about this. "There's a rip in Tess' uniform. Maybe it was there beforehand. Maybe she tore it when she fell. Maybe *you* ripped it to make Max confess to something you imagined. And the 'blood?' Ketchup. How many times do you have to hear it for the facts to penetrate your skull?"  
  
"Oooh, dissed by Isabel Evans," Maria snapped, hissing on the "Evans" as if it were an insult. "Don't think too hard--we wouldn't want you to strain your brain." Did I ever mention that Maria and Isabel aren't too fond of each other?  
  
I really wasn't in the mood for a catfight. "Cut it out, you two."  
  
"Well, all I know is--if you don't let me in on this 'secret,' I'm giving this uniform over to the police or the sheriff or something," Maria announced.  
  
"But it's my uniform," I protested.  
  
"And I'm holding it, aren't I?" she pointed out. "By the way, the sheriff is *very* interested in a few details. Like why there's no bullethole in the wall? Oh, yeah, I forgot. It's in this dress."  
  
We had no choice. They had to tell her. Max shot me a worried glance. "Is she going to freak out?"  
  
Maria DeLuca? Freak out? "Yeah. *Hell,* yeah." 


End file.
